Benefits of Morae and LookBack: As you can see in the images above the user-testing recording software allows evaluators to capture the user’s mouse movements, verbal comments and register facial expressions.
Demographics: We required that our user testers had experience with libraries.
Analysis: We organized our user test subjects' responses into a spread sheet and further organized and analyzed using affinity mapping.
Columbia Libraries Usability Report
Columbia University Libraries Usability Report
URL: https://library.columbia.edu/
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Project Description
The Columbia University Libraries website is the access point to “provide excellent service to students and faculty that will advance their research, teaching and learning, and to support library users anytime and anywhere.” (library.columbia.edu/about)
With a collection of over 12 million volumes, over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, graphic and audiovisual materials, Columbia University Libraries ranks as one of the top five academic library systems in North America and is the largest in the state of New York, hosting over 3 million visitors annually.
From gathering university information to searching through its collections, the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services website serves 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students, nearly 4,000 full-time faculty, 12,000 non-instructional employees, and alumni, visiting scholars and others.
With a keen understanding that its digitally fluent faculty and students demand a user-friendly, seamless experience, the library is committed to continuous incremental improvement based on user feedback. This is evident in its five critical areas of focus, including: building effective interfaces and improved access to scholarly information (library.columbia.edu/about/strategic plan). CLIO, the recently redesigned discovery system, provides a single search interface for gathering information from many different sources, including catalogs, journal articles, and academic commons.
As the library of a major academic institution, it’s equally important that basic tasks can be completed with ease and satisfaction. With that in mind Candace Kail, Columbia Libraries Web Services, asked our team of four to evaluate the site’s usability and make recommendations for improvement.
Methodology
Our four-member research team conducted synchronous, face-to-face user tests and asynchronous, remote user tests. Each evaluator recruited one participant for our face-to-face tests. Two face-to-face tests were moderated with a partner, and two were individually moderated. We conducted our asynchronous testing via usertesting.com, an online service that recruits testers, administers tests, and then provides video and metrics for each test. Each evaluator launched three tests, netting 12 remote participants.
Because we sought to capture task completion and observe users, we employed the “think aloud” method, which is widely used and seems to present few methodological difficulties (Norgaard & Hornbaek, 2006). In addition to the in-context observations that were recorded, the post-test questionnaire allowed for open-ended responses, encouraging participants to reflect on their experience.
The face-to-face tests were administered using Morae and LookBack. The Morae tests were done in the same location –a user-testing lab– with one team member acting as moderator and another as an observer. The LookBack tests were conducted in separate locations, each with a single moderator. These decisions were dictated by scheduling logistics and preferences of the test subjects. Both Morae and LookBack record on-screen user movement as well as capturing audio and webcam footage.
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Ultimately, we made four recommendations we believed would create a positive user experience that would then inform the experience throughout the website.:
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Reduce Homepage Clutter
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Enhance Tablet-user Search
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Clarify Borrowing and Adding Limits
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Establish Home Icon
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Deliverables
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My Role
I was part of a four-person team conducting in person usability testing as well as launching and collecting four online user tests. We participated equally in defining the scope, developing the methodology and user tests, analyzing results and creating and testing recommendations.
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Learning Outcome: User-centered
Applied inspection-based and field-based testing models to understand and recommend improvements to the user interface for Columbia University Libraries. We confronted the challenges of Columbia's legacy system and decentralized ownership of content by narrowing our focus and analyzing user feedback.
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Learning Outcome: Technology
The project provided an opportunity to understand some of the many application interfaces operating within the Columbia Libraries websphere. Rather than addressing the problems and requirements of the underlying technology, we used Morae user-testing software to observe and record user interactions.
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